Norman Reedus: " I have a titanium glance" (translation of Italian Vanity Fair March Issue)
[Mod note: Special thanks to ludegio, who provided this translation for us, from the original text in Italian to English. We’ve tweaked some minor points for clarity. Scans are available here.]
Norman Reedus: “I have a titanium glance” by Marco De Martino
He hunts zombies in a post apocalyptic series, but also in life he doesn’t miss anything done. From the encounter with a super model, to the clash with a truck “sent” by REM that left a metallic memory.
He’s coming back to Chattanooga, Georgia, to shoot another season of The Walking Dead, the zombie apocalypse that has made him famous as Daryl Dixon, the survivor who kills living dead with a crossbow.
"I have lived there for five years, for about eight months a year and it is great: every morning I get up, I take the Harley and go on the set," says Norman Reedus.
"We work in the oppressive, humid, and hot; and we are always covered in mud and blood. So much, that often we don’t even need makeup, even black eyes or scars, as we get hurt all the time. But it is a joy, it’s like being children again."
Do you miss the zombies in the not-shooting periods?
Yes, but at the same time I feel the rush to recover time that I can devote myself. I make films, I go to the gym, I enrolled in any course.
Right now I have a trainer who, just yesterday, taught me the squat, a yoga teacher, two psychologists who take care of my mind. I also began studying Kabbalah, and yesterday when a friend told me that there was a voodoo holy woman, from New Orleans, in the city I immediately said ”Can I meet her?”
In the New York restaurant where we meet, the appointment with Norman Reedus is transformed into a dinner interrupted by occasional greetings of neighboring tables.
He is an actor of cult films like Six Ways To Sunday with Debbie Harry, but also a director of short films, painter and photographer. He has a 15-year-old child with supermodel Helena Christensen, with whom he was together for five years starting in 1998. He is a model himself. Reedus has such an ability to make everything cool that we are not surprised he managed to do it with the zombie hunter that made The Walking Dead series of the most-watched American television.
The surprise is that instead of being a snob, a bit artist, a bit playboy, he is so simple that, when at one point he goes away for a moment, he entrusts to me his phone: he wants me to watch the music video shot with the punk band The Bots. When he returns he tells me that Lena Dunham also had to be in the clip, the creator and star of the series Girls, and she will soon be at his side in the movie Sky by the French Fabienne Berthaud.
"Too nice, Lena. I texted her to ask if she if she would dance on a bed in the desert for my video, and she replied: ‘I am a very passionate dancer.’ Then we have not done anything, oh well."
You’re already appeared in many music videos.
There was a time when David Fincher and other film directors had made an agency specializing in music videos, and they passed my name. I appear in Strange Currencies by REM, in Violently Happy by Björk, and I also worked with Radiohead, Keith Richards, Lady Gaga. But the video that I showed you is the first that I have directed.
Do you have other projects as a director?
Yes, a film about the true story of a transsexual held captive in Harlem. But there was also a time when I thought I could just direct, that my acting career was over, that I would be disfigured after the terrible car accident I had.
How did it happen?
I was in Berlin for the Film Festival, and Michael Stipe had invited me to see the R.E.M. concert. The car in which I was traveling was hit by a truck and I ended up against the windshield. The amazing thing is that the Tir was the one that brought the music instruments of R.E.M. in Frankfurt.
Now we joke about it, and Michael says to me: “If you don’t come to the appointment, I run over you with a truck. “
You do not even have a scar on your face.
It’s been ten years, and when it is very cold or very hot the headache comes: I have a reconstructed titanium eye socket. From this tragedy, however, was born a movie. During the days of hospitalization I got the idea to tell what was going through my head while Miles Davis was playing (editor’s note: short “Meet Me In Berlin,” released in 2006).
Your son is called Mingus, another reference to jazz?
Sure, because when I was with Helena I listened to much music of bassist Charlie Mingus.
What was it like being together with one of the most famous supermodels ever existed?
Beautiful, and daunting. Now that there are no more supermodels than there were, it’s easy to forget it but they were like rockstars: when we walked into a room everyone turned, someone almost choked on their food. For me, I knew nothing of that world, it was like taking a crash course.
And what have you learned?
Get out of the way, because the models at that level always work and are like bulldozers, very determined. Especially someone like Helena who is also involved in charity and photography. Maximum admiration: in her place, I would not have endured all that attention.
You have been a model.
Briefly, a Prada campaign that was seen much more than all my films put together. As a model I’m not much: too short, too big. There is no comparison with Helena.
How is the relationship now that you have separated?
Excellent, and therefore managing our son is also easy, especially now that he is 15 years old. The only problems are logistical: Where is the biology book? or The sweatshirt is in your house? But I feel a little bad for Mingus: having two famous parents, he is constantly thrown off from social networks because there are a lot of fake profiles with his name.
What he thinks of his father, the “zombie hunter”?
At first he thought it was very cool. Now it is a bit tired of all those who stop for a picture: he is always very polite, but clearly annoyed.
How do you explain the success of your character?
In the comic that the series came from, Daryl did not exist: it was written thinking about me and grew gradually. At first everyone wanted him to have a love story, but I opposed, saying that we had to wait. There’s an episode in which I’m kissed and I flinch. For me it was a natural reaction, but the writers came up with the idea of inventing the presence of abuse in my past.
What strikes you about the success of Daryl?
The passion that it inspires: there are cancer associations named after him. And then the drawings, paintings, poems that I get. I gathered all the material in the book Thanks For All The Niceness. To me it’s like a kind of Kickstarter: I hope for some fans to be the beginning of a career.
Are you afraid of being too identified with the character?
You’re asking if I fear that this is the Fonzie moment of my career? No, because since I started this series I’ve done five movies. And all the colleagues who leave the series are recycled immediately.
It’s easy to die with many zombies around.
Yes, and it is also traumatic, because you know you’re going to die only that morning when it happens. As in life, you always think that you have more time.
And if it were to happen to you, how would you like to die?
I walk down a hill, getting smaller. At one point, a dog runs next to me, and then we disappear together, on the horizon.
